photography by studio home

Okay – I’ll admit that I woke up feeling a little nervous when I realised I had ambitiously declared I would deliver you some demystifying photography advice! I mean ….. its unlikely I know much more than you BUT if there’s one thing I do know how to do, its use the internet to find out the answers to everything and I have some favourite spots to share with you. The questions below are ones that I have wondered myself and not been all that willing to ask! I also share

I discovered my love of taking photos purely by accident and entirely out of necessity. When I began wanting to interview and share stories with you, I found myself in the rather boring position of simply having to take the pics myself – there was no budget floating around to hire a pro. It was pure bloody luck that I actually loved the photography the most (and that you guys seemed to like it too?!) and armed with a basic 15 min editing lesson from Camilla I began experimenting. I learnt that

Welcome to the first TEAM.WORK collaboration of 2015 and in a nod to our ANZAC friendship, our first with an Australian based brand. Radical Yes! were not only appealing partners with a functional, fun and awesome take on shoes, I was also super attracted to their modern business mentality. They are an ambitious, exciting but calculated brand who have made their home online and make up their own rules ( two things I am quite into too!). SO for YOU we knocked heads, threw ideas back and forth across the Tasman

This feature is an all time favourite. My visit to Balquhidder House in Napier, the headquarters of the artistic, fearless and creative Culy family was meant to be a relatively fleeting one. Gunning to be there for about an hour and a half I was forcing myself to leave out of politeness after five…. Despite it being a year on (Time! Where did you go!), revisiting my notes and screes of photos had me once again dreaming of being a resident and member of their crew. There is an amazing

In April 2014 I headed to the South Island with a 2 week road trip planned a head of me. I looked over my loose itinerary taking me from Queenstown to Wellington and pinpointed a spare 24 hour hours, naming it “Jon Thom Day”. While there are SO many more people that I want to meet in Dunedin, I had a small window which involved a 7 hour round trip drive and room for just one interview in the southern city – and I was determined more than ever that I would

This is quite a meaty post but I hope to offer you all an insight into the Bali that I saw over my three weeks AND the one that skirts the sparkly resorts and packed shopping streets! While I was SO lucky to find myself absorbed in the daily life of those clever NZ/AUS creative brands that I was visiting, I found that I was having a totally different experience to friends that had been before. I was asked if I had been to “this” beach club or “that” bar…and

So this is something new! Over the next three weeks I’ll be sharing 3 little projects that the clever Lu Diamond and I joined forces on in partnership with Farmers to celebrate their fresh new seasons collection (which to be honest…reallllly impressed me!) You will spot some of our favourite Farmers products in each shoot all of which were the basis of inspiration for each of our floral creations. As a SERIAL “forager” (some may refer to this as foliage poaching) I wanted to create some posts around the ease at

Its no secret that I am a fan girl of interior designer /stylist /writer /maximalist /teacher /shop keeper /colour nut /wife and mother; Alex Fulton. I connected with her years ago during the early days of design blogging in NZ, and then in person in the midst of the sweaty midnight mosh pit at Rippon Festival in early 2012. That night she ripped off her bracelet of rainbow coloured glow beads and forced me to take them – that was it for me. I was hers ! Since then its not

Summer on the Sunshine Coast correctly suggests “warmth” and on my one and only visit to the area it certainly lived up to its name! It was actually a massive relief when my sister and I arrived at the home of artist; Carley Cornelissen (after an hour with zero air conditioning in the car!) and descended into her cool basement studio space. I had spotted Carley’s bright multi-media work at Byron Bay’s Retrospect Galleries and immediately googled her. It wasn’t long before a visit was arranged and I had the chance

Despite it being some time ago now, I still remember the thrill of scheduling in a visit with Kim Jaeger while in Melbourne late last year. I had followed Kim’s instagram for months and marveled at the “work in progress shots” from her studio as she hand crafted one “Pot head” after another – each different and each strangely packed with character! I got the impression there was more to this project than the occasional shot on Instagram, so for her to accept my request for a visit felt like I